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ZeroFries

648 karma · joined May 25, 2014

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ZeroFries··on OpenAI dev forum is trying to make a little miracle happen
Great to see the forum mods doing the best they can
ZeroFries··on Earth had hottest 3-months on record; unprecedented sea temps & extreme weather
Have you done the cost:benefit analysis? Curious what makes you so confident that "crashing the economy" (you're aware of all the excess death and despair this would cause?) is the best move here.
ZeroFries··on Investors account for 30 per cent of home buying in Canada, data show
The federal government doesn't "hoard" land around areas where people would want to purchase a first home. The vast majority of crown land is not around any major urban centers.

Canadian tech workers make way above median income levels.

ZeroFries··on US inflation means families are spending $709 more per month than two years ago
Even with the prices of commodities falling, stock prices can still rise, and as long as this is higher than the deflationary rate, investing still beats hoarding.
ZeroFries··on A Love Letter to Driving Alone
Although it's the riskiest time for deer, I love centering my road trips around dusk, so that you get some daylight, some golden hour softness, a beautiful sunset, and some darkness. It feels like a complete experience that way, a miniature but whole life cycle.
ZeroFries··on Is consciousness more like chess or the weather?
Sensations are not just information. A number is information. There's something that it's like to experience a sensation. There's nothing that it's like to be a number.
ZeroFries··on Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (January 2023)
Location: Ottawa, Canada

Remote: yes

Willing to relocate: no

Technologies: Ruby/Rails, JS, React, SQL

Resume: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zerofries

Email: sgarvagh@gmail.com

ZeroFries··on Swarms of soldier crabs can implement logical gates (2012)
No, it's not. The argument rests on the fact that it can't be solely discrete across the entire system. The discrete information needs to "come-together" in a non-discrete way, e.g. something like quantum coherence. This is the binding-problem in a nutshell.

All quanta arise from the wave-equations and can be modeled with continuous mathematics.

ZeroFries··on Swarms of soldier crabs can implement logical gates (2012)
The input system is discrete but the end-result, our conscious experience of our world-simulations (made up of visual qualia) are not discrete. They are unified.

An example of how this could be implemented (not saying this is the case, just one of several possibilities):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_theories_of_co...

ZeroFries··on Swarms of soldier crabs can implement logical gates (2012)
There's no reason to believe qualia arise in a given discrete computation. Why would they? In what steps in the algorithm do qualia arise and why, what characteristics do they have, what causal roles do they play, etc.

It's completely self-evident we experience qualia. It's what our experiences are made of. There wouldn't be anything to experience or discuss if we didn't. The brain is not a deliberate, man-made object like a computer is, hence why it can possess these properties with us being unaware of how (they were selected for via evolution), but the computer cannot.

ZeroFries··on Swarms of soldier crabs can implement logical gates (2012)
This is just not the case, even with infinite energy and time. There are properties of quantum Turing machines that are not reproducible with classical Turing machines.

https://web.archive.org/web/20081123183419/http://www.ceid.u...

ZeroFries··on Swarms of soldier crabs can implement logical gates (2012)
Self-driving cars don't experience visual qualia. A model is not the same as an actual experience. There's no binding-problem to solve with self-driving cars because there's no attempts to make them conscious. It's a completely different thing.
ZeroFries··on Swarms of soldier crabs can implement logical gates (2012)
Lots of reasons. You need energy to store the information. You wouldn't be gaining anything, only losing efficiency. The quantum level is the "lowest" level of existence, there's nothing "lower" to use to simulate it. Furthermore, "random" is a critical concept in QM, and one can never achieve true random with a TM. What's the digital algorithm to generate a truly random number?

Edit: in a way simulating a crab with a bunch of crabs would be kind of like simulating energy dynamics/QM with energy

ZeroFries··on Swarms of soldier crabs can implement logical gates (2012)
Your left and right visual fields are united in one "space". Classical computation cannot achieve such unity. Digital computation concerns discrete parts changing in discrete steps, which is not like a field at all.
ZeroFries··on Swarms of soldier crabs can implement logical gates (2012)
The law of large numbers let's you abstract in such a way that the group can appear simpler than the individual unit. Of course, to fully simulate it across every single possible scenario, one would need to model all the individual units in order to accurately model the group, and so technically the group is more complex to fully model.
ZeroFries··on Swarms of soldier crabs can implement logical gates (2012)
A Turing machine could never simulate anything down to the quantum level, including brains, which is necessary to solve the binding-problem.
ZeroFries··on The demise and potential revival of the American chestnut
Chestnut wood has many desirable properties such as rot resistance which lowers the need for toxic wood preservatives. It makes great roofing shingles.
ZeroFries··on Hourly 4-second sprints prevent impairment of postprandial fat metabolism
No it means the amount of calories coming from body fat is increased by 43%, which may amount to nothing over the course of the day if it also simultaneously increases appetite. Almost all forms of weight loss suffer from this problem - the amount of fat lost is generally proportional to the long-term appetite increase, so that 95% of people regain the weight.
ZeroFries··on Human body temperature has decreased in United States, study finds
When I shovel the driveway, I'm sweating wearing no jacket, but I freeze sitting on the porch in a parka.
ZeroFries··on Renowned Entomologist Says ‘Get Rid of Your Lawn’
I'm hoping it's less itch-provoking as well. I can't lie on grass without irritating my skin like crazy.
ZeroFries··on Renowned Entomologist Says ‘Get Rid of Your Lawn’
This is the viable alternative, having similar aesthetics to a traditional lawn. However there's still a fair amount of push-back. I just bought a house and am planning a clover lawn this spring, and discussing it with extended family over the holidays was met with a large amount of skepticism.
ZeroFries··on Renowned Entomologist Says ‘Get Rid of Your Lawn’
We tell serial killers with an appreciation for the grotesque to cut it out all the time.
ZeroFries··on World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen Is Now World Fantasy Premier League #1
Or, you know, they enjoy the craft/art-form, and want to do it professionally. There's definitely some weird selection pressure in show-biz, and impulsiveness/ego may play a small role, but there's a million ego-maniacs for every Tom Cruise.
ZeroFries··on The Strange Blissfulness of Storms
I sometimes feel the same way when sick and I accept that I'm just going to have to put everything on hold until I get through it.
ZeroFries··on Cooling a house without air conditioning
I was told many times to go with a slightly undersized AC, precisely for this reason - they're better dehumidifiers because they run for longer periods of time.
ZeroFries··on The Case Against Octopus Farming
Consumer pressure
ZeroFries··on The Paradoxical Effects of Pursuing Positive Emotion (2013) [pdf]
Desires themselves are imbued with negative affect. As Naval Ravikant tweeted, "Desire is a contract that you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want." More fundamentally, I think the very mechanism of how desires work is through negative hedonic tone. Contemplating and actually fulfilling the desire is associated with positive hedonic tone. The gradient between the negative hedonic tone of the desire and the positive hedonic tone of its fulfillment is how motivation emerges.

Long-term meditation is often associated with a lessening of the influence of desire, and greater happiness.

ZeroFries··on Study: Immigrants and their kids founded 45% of U.S. Fortune 500 companies
Then you got outcompeted, and an immigrant was able to offer better value.
ZeroFries··on Amazon Accidentally Sold $13k Camera Gear for $100 on Prime Day
I've purchased products and handed over money and still not honoured for a price claimed to be a mistake. Latest example 40g of marijuana priced at $1/g. They ended up shipping a quarter ounce instead, 20% of the original deal.
ZeroFries··on Sugary drinks and cancer risk: results from NutriNet-Santé prospective cohort
Many types cancers can use ketones as fuel.
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